Comics for September 19, FL Sept 26

[dvandom]

                    Dave's Unspoilt Capsules and Awards
         The Week's Picks and Pans, plus Awards of Dubious Merit

Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups.  Recommendation does
not factor in price.  Not all books will have arrived in your area this week.
Still allergy season, but at least cooler.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

First Look Comments:

     Books I read over the weekend as First Looks, but didn't buy, so can't
really say much in detail about.  DC has stopped having First Looks, so it's
just Marvel and Image...and there's word that Diamond doesn't want to bother
with the program at all anymore.

     Books for next week - 

     The Order #3: Marvel - Calamity, the speeder with the cybernetic legs,
is the main focus this time, continuing the storytelling device Fraction's
been using.  Decent story, if a little scattered at times.  $2.99/$3.75Cn

     Annihilation: Conquest - Starlord #3 (of 4): Marvel - A little recon,
then more running battles and snark, plus the body count reverses slightly.
Recommended.  $2.99/$3.75Cn

     Cable & Deadpool #45: Marvel - Skottie Young shoots for retro on the
cover and unsurprisingly misses by a lot.  Interior artist Reilly Brown
doesn't know the difference between a machinegun and a rifle.  The story is
fun with temporal mechanics and repeated mashing of the reset button.
Recommended.  $2.99/$3.75Cn

     Avengers the Initiative #6: Marvel - Um.  Centers on a "who nearly
murdered someone" plot, decent enough until the final page reveal.  Steve
Uy's art is so-so.  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$3.75Cn


Capsules:
     Short, relatively spoiler-free reviews of books I actually bring home
(as opposed to reading in preview form in the shop or online).  If I get a
book late due to distributor foulups or whatever, I'll put it in the Missing
section.

     Books of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Marvel
Adventures Avengers #16

     Notably Bad: Superman: Doomsday DVD.  Seriously.  This is awful.

     Superman: Doomsday DVD: DC/Warner - After being badly burned by the
sucktasticness of Superman: Brainiac Attacks, I'd decided not to get this
DVD.  But, I was informed, Bruce Timm was producing and directing.  So how
bad could it be?  So I picked it up.  BAD MISTAKE.  Leaving aside the bad
stunt-casting of Big Names on the voice talent, leaving aside the slightly
ugly redesigns...Duane Capizzi's writing is bad enough to counteract any
positive influence Timm and Romano could hope to have.  He has a horrible ear
for dialogue, and has trouble with even one-dimensional character depth.  You
may have heard of the "Idiot Plot," where everyone has to act like idiots to
make the plot work?  Well, this plot usually doesn't require everyone to be
an idiot (and, in fact, isn't that bad most of the time), Capizzi just makes
them idiots ANYWAY.  Seriously.  He even manages to mischaracterize
*Doomsday*, and can you imagine how hard it is to pull that off?
Single-minded engine of destruction who won't stop until his target is
dead...unless distracted by a helpless bystander, at which point he wanders
away from Superman.  Repeatedly.  And, of course, the "bump up the rating to
PG-13" stunts just add layers of weak crap on top of the bad core
characterization.  The Wal-Mart exclusive version has a second disc that's a
CDROM comic copy of Superman #75.  With a proprietary reader that requires
full screen (so no multitasking) and only allows sequential access to the
pages.  Nor can you resize the viewing window, so if your monitor aspect is
wrong, the pages are warped.  About the only good thing about it is that it
works on a Mac.  A sucky bonus disc to complement a sucky main feature.  I
don't even recomment wasting the time to watch this turkey when it comes out
on Cartoon Network.  If I could return a DVD on the grounds of it sucking,
I'd take this back.  $14.96 at Wal-Mart (opening week sale).

     Aquaman Sword of Atlantis #56: DC - McManus's art is slipping to its
more cartoony end this month, and the story jumps around a LOT, to the point
where a few captions would have really been helpful.  Still, a clever
resolution to the plot from Williams.  Recommended.  $2.99/$3.65Cn  (I feel
the need to point out here that Canadian dollars are almost equal with
U.S. dollars on the open exchange now.  $3.06Cn would be about right.) 

     Green Arrow and Black Canary Wedding Special #1: DC - This sort of wraps
around the JLA Wedding Special, starting before it, including some short bits
at the bachelor/bachelorette parties, and then moving on to the wedding
night.  Winick does a decent job of playing with cliches, and Amanda Conner
gets in a LOT of visual humor on the sidelines in addition to the foreground
stuff.  The actual story's a bit on the weak side, but it's mostly a fun
read.  Recommended.  $3.99/$4.75Cn

     Shadowpact #17: DC - Matt Sturges on writing, Doug Braithwaite on art.
So-so issue.  The art generally works, but doesn't thrill me.  The story is a
definite pause between acts, and only one scene really stands out.  Mildly
recommended.  $2.99/$3.65Cn

     The Irredeemable Ant-Man #12: Marvel - Final Issue, to be continued over
in Avengers: the Initiative.  Well, not plot-wise, Kirkman either wraps up
all the specific plot threads or ties them off so they'll keep.  There is a
minor continuity goof (I'm pretty sure the Wii was Black Fox's in the first
place, unless he made a gift of it), but it's not a big problem.  And Kirkman
has managed to write O'Grady well enough that it's impossible to tell which,
if any, of his Big Honest Admissions this issue is true.  Recommended.
$2.99/$3.75Cn 

     Marvel Adventures Avengers #16: Marvel - Hawkeye's on the cover, and the
Egghead version of the Masters of Evil is inside.  Parker continues to show
how he knows how to capture the feel of the 60s Marvel without simply copying
it.  It does seem here that MA Spider-Man isn't in a shared continuity with
MA Avengers, not sure if I prefer it that way or not.  The humor balance is
just about right, plenty of laughs but no forced over the top stuff.
Strongly recommended.  $2.99/$3.75Cn

     Dynamo5 #7: Image - The Chrysalis arc wraps up, with plenty of lies and
deception at the end.  And it seems like the villains were trying to reform
in some way, but it's a dangler being left for later.  Recommended.
$3.50/$3.70Cn (almost at the actual exchange rate)

     The Official Handbook of the Gold Digger Universe (GD Sourcebook) #9:
Antarctic Press - Maelstrom through Nali.  Hm, the Leprechauns in the
foreground of the cover really stand out, the filter on everyone else makes
them a little blurry but the O'guys are sharp and crisp with finer
lineweights.  Checking previous issues shows that they've been doing this all
along to a lesser extent, but it really stands out this issue.  Mind you, the
printing inside is blurry on the "techspecs" as well, so maybe the blur
levels in general got cranked up in the image files (the regular text is
perfectly crisp).  Okay, I'm going on a lot about the printing quality, but
there's not really anything new to say about the guidebook.  Get it already.
Recommended.  $3.95/$4.55Cn


Gone Missing:

     Stuff that came out some places this week and that I wanted to buy, but
couldn't find for whatever reason, so people don't have to email me asking
"Why didn't you review X?"  (If it's neither here nor in the section above,
though, feel free to ask, I might have forgotten about it!) 

     Current list as of 9/19:

     Still missing and might come in: Fallen Angel #15, Doktor Sleepless #2,
PS238 #25.
     Cancelled by Diamond: Transformers Timelines.
     

Awards:

"Okay, The Persian Cat Stroking Was Cool" Award to Superman: Doomsday

"Mother I'd Like to Flee" Award to Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56

"But Is the Fight Scene Catered?" Award to Green Arrow and Black Canary
     Wedding Special #1

"Zeus Can Now Form A Support Group" Award to Shadowpact #17

"Did Razorback Even Ever HAVE A Book To Get Cancelled?" Award to The
     Irredeemable Ant-Man #12

"Kenya Feel The Love?" Award to Marvel Adventures Avengers #16

"Sometimes Playing It Close To The Vest Backfires" Award to Dynamo5 #7

"Talk Like A Leprechaun Pirate Day?" Award to the Official Handbook of the
     Gold Digger Universe #9

   Dave Van Domelen, "Hey, Iron Man -- were you going to call those battlesuit drivers 'Mandroids'?" "What? No...no! That's awful! I had a really cool name for them!" - Spider-Man, Iron Man, Marvel Adventures Avengers #16